Metuchen High School: GIMP

14. Animated GIF

6 points

This exercise introduces you to creating animated GIFs.

The GIF format supports only 256 colors so it is more appropriate for drawings and cartoons than for photographs.  (The JPEG format commonly used for photographs supports 16 million colors.)  It is a good idea to keep the dimensions of an animated GIF relatively small in order to keep its file size reasonable.

Here is my simple animated GIF:

• To start making an animated GIF like this, you'll need to find an image that you want to use. Then create each of the images that you plan to put into your animated GIF.

• Open a new project. Use Open as Layers to open each of the images that you've created. This will give each image its own layer. Use Windows > Layers to open the Layers panel. The animated GIF will begin with the bottom layer and move upwards to the top, and then repeat.

• Begin setting up the animation: Filters > Animation > Optimize (for GIF). Right-click on each layer and choose "Edit Layer Attributes".  After the layer's name, in parentheses edit the number of milliseconds that you want the layer to display.  For example, if the layer is named "Layer 2" and you want it to display for 2.5 seconds, you would set this up: Layer 2 (2500ms)

• To view the animated GIF: Filters > Animation > Playback and click the Play button.

• To create a standalone animated GIF: File > Export. Under Select File Type, choose GIF. Click Export. In the "Export Image as GIF" panel, you can select Loop Forever.  For "Frame disposal where unspecified," choose One Frame Per Layer.  Click "Use disposal entered above for all frames".  Click Export.

   

  Exercise

  Create an animated GIF with 4+ slides.

   

  GIMP Links

  • www.gimp.org/tutorials/Simple_Animations/

  
  Videos

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-9_HwRcd1A